It’s been over a half-year since CDEC burst onto the international scene and took second place at The International 5. Unfortunately time has not been kind to CDEC, teams now know the way CDEC likes to play and they, in turn, have not received the friendliest patches from Icefrog. While some teams have been rejuvenated by 6.86c, CDEC is one that has had mediocrity loom over their heads.

At World Cyber Arena 2015, CDEC was knocked out 1-2 against the eventual tournament winners, Alliance. Though it’s no shame to lose to the tournament winners, CDEC looked lackluster in the group stages against Filipino teams and the ailing Invictus Gaming and barely pulled to the first position of their group. CDEC also bombed out of the Mars Dota League Chinese Qualifier, casting a lot of shade on their current form as perhaps the worst roster under the name of CDEC. Contrast these to their fifth/sixth place at Frankfurt in which they were not one of the strongest teams at the event, but were at very least quite close to being one.

Not all news is so bad for CDEC; one facet being that they have played very few games since WCA and another being that the team easily won ECL 2015 Autumn, a league for the non-premier Chinese teams. But instead of those local teams, they will be facing the world’s best at The Shanghai Major and to fare well they must figure out how to make their current strengths even stronger in this patch, or else we might be bidding farewell to the current CDEC roster.

Gameplay

During most of 2015, CDEC was known for their clean cut aggression and understanding of heroes that put pressure on the enemy as well as gave trouble to splitpushers. As one of the teams that epitomized 6.84 and 6.85’s style, they preferred to play five man snowball lineups in order to capitalize on the heroes they played to take advantageous teamfights and objectives.

By now many of CDEC’s mainstay heroes have been nerfed and CDEC has had to draw up new strategies in 6.86c. Winter Wyvern, Tusk, Gyrocopter, and Queen of Pain have not fared well in the current meta and CDEC members have turned to other heroes to retain some of the same style, but with Agressif having a more varied and harder type of carry pool. In other words, CDEC has shifted their style to be a 4 protect 1, a bit like LGD’s current style now with Sylar.

Unfortunately, CDEC’s hero pool has not greatly adapted to the meta. They have trouble playing with or against a number of key heroes of the meta (or are untested), crippling the team all too much. Some of these heroes include Invoker and Lone Druid and to a lesser extent Chen, Terrorblade, Morphling, and Spectre, as well as others, but it’s difficult to judge due to the limited number of games they’ve played since WCA.

Players

How to Beat - CDEC

CDEC’s struggles with their weaknesses have been documented greatly in their recent games.

Their first weakness is their limited hero pool. As stated earlier, they have been shown to be weak on many important heroes of this patch like Invoker and Chen. This weakness can be used to exploit CDEC’s bans and picks, forcing them to ban heroes they cannot play, pick heroes they cannot play, and heroes that can be countered through the draft. Ultimately, CDEC’s weakness in their draft will be utterly crippling for them as they inevitably need to face teams that are fluent in the current meta.

CDEC’s second weakness is that the team’s style of play focuses on the midgame and snowballing off of it. With this knowledge in mind, opposing teams can know what CDEC will draft and how they will use it, and then make adjustments to their game. For example, if CDEC draft Nature’s Prophet, the other team will know that CDEC do not really like using Prophet to split push all game with Aghanims and Octarine, but rather contribute to ganks and fights with Drums and a Necronomicon. If CDEC’s snowball is prevented and the opposing team has better lategame and splitpush, CDEC has been shown to have a hard time dealing with them.